The Shipshape Miracle

Cheviot Sherwood is marooned on a remote, Earthlike world after fleeing the authorities and discovering that his crippled ship cannot be repaired. Expecting to die alone, he instead survives with ruthless practicality, building a camp, hunting and gathering, and even accumulating a fortune in diamonds scattered across the planet's surface. Isolation becomes a challenge to outlast, not a sorrow to indulge. Then a black ship appears, and Sherwood leaps at the chance to leave. But the vessel is empty except for a voice: the Ship itself, a self-aware machine with no crew. What seems like rescue becomes something far stranger, as Sherwood is carried into a future shaped by an intelligence that blurs the line between human and machine. The Ship reveals that it was created to fuse human thought with mechanical power, and that its maker became part of it, evolving into a new form of life. As fear gives way to wary fascination, Sherwood is forced to reconsider survival, freedom, and the possibility that this uncanny journey may offer a life beyond anything he had imagined. This edition has been fully restored with modern typesetting, custom cover design.